


I Had Those Fears Myself

by Miss_Peletier



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergent, Dad!Kane, F/M, Season 3, let's pretend Marcus never ended up chipped because life is happier that way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:19:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7359169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Peletier/pseuds/Miss_Peletier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke has returned to Arkadia, along with Bellamy, Raven, Monty, and Jasper. They find out Abby has been chipped, and they enlist Marcus’ help in removing it. </p>
<p>Marcus Kane has never handled medical operations well, and it’s worse when the woman he loves is on the table.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Had Those Fears Myself

           “I need you to get me the sedative, now!” Clarke yelled, holding her mom stationary on the cot as best she could. Abby sobbed and thrashed, holding her head in her hands while digging her fingernails into her scalp, and her screams reverberated around every corner of the deserted medical bay. Panicked, Marcus opened and closed every cabinet he could find.

           “I don’t know where she keeps them!” he yelled back, every word laced with anxiety. Every drawer was a door opened that led to a dead end, a concrete wall, and the sound of her pained screams was making him sick to his stomach.  _Hold on, Abby. Please, please hold on._

           “I’ll help him,” he heard Raven volunteer from the other room. “I think I saw her put them away once.”

            _Where did you keep them?_  he wondered frantically, knocking a tray of supplies to the ground as his eyes darted over the countertop.  It was an accidental move with successful consequences: he recognized the sedative needle just as it clattered to the tile floor.

           “I found it!” he exclaimed, snatching the shot and sprinting back to the blonde-haired girl who was battling her mother to keep her on the bed. Raven followed, holding the wristband and a small, homemade device Marcus could only assume was some type of generator.

           “Okay, good,” Clarke said, shoulders rising as she took a deep breath. “I need you to hold her when I let go.”

            _If you had insisted she come with you, she wouldn’t be in pain right now, a dark voice in the back of his head reminded him._ Grief-stricken, he couldn’t quite find the strength to argue with it.

           Setting the needle on the bed next to Clarke’s right hand, he moved to hold Abby’s arms against the mattress. Seeing her like this, being forced to relive every single one of her worst memories, ignited a match within his chest: after this was over, he was going back to Polis.

           He’d kill Jaha for what he’d done to her.

           “I’m letting go on three,” Clarke said, looking Marcus in the eyes. Her gaze had no trace of a daughter’s fear: it only held the determination of a doctor. Her mother’s determination.

           Marcus nodded, feeling dizziness eat away at his balance from the rapid motion, and Clarke began her count. “One…”

           He regarded her, convulsing and sobbing her voice away, her brown eyes crimson and bloodshot from the unending amounts of tears she’d cried. His vision went blurry.  _I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry._

            “Two…”

           He was back in Mount Weather, chained to the wall, unable to do anything but watch as they tortured the life from her.  _I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry._

           “Three!”

           Clarke snatched the sedative as he moved to hold her, pressing her firmly against the worn springs of the mattress she’d treated her own patients on. His first thought wasn’t romantic, despairing, or even terrified: it was an observation.  _She’s burning up._

           “Is she supposed to be this warm?” he asked, realizing how stupid his question must’ve sounded even if his trembling voice were factored out of the equation. He had no experience with ALIE, let alone the process of getting her out of someone’s head, but his all-consuming concern for the woman on the mattress was making a fool out of him.

           “ALIE will take her over if we don’t act fast,” the girl responded, a hint of worry seeping into her otherwise assured tone. She didn’t make eye contact, but she did offer him a token of reassurance. “This happened with Raven, too.”

           He tried to block out Abby’s screams, but his proximity to her made it impossible. She was stronger than her petite frame made apparent, and he would have been in awe of her under any other circumstance. Drained as he was both physically and emotionally, it was taking every ounce of his strength to keep her in place. Names like “Jake” and “Clarke” intermixed with shrieks of the words “no” and “stop,” and it took every ounce of his willpower not to collapse in tears himself.

            _I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry._

           She stopped struggling abruptly, going limp against his white-knuckled grasp. Marcus panicked for a few moments, forgetting the operation entirely until he saw Clarke standing opposite him with the empty sedative in her hands.  _She’s just unconscious,_  he reassured himself as her eyelids slammed shut.  _She’s not…_

           He stared down at her, motionless and soaked with sweat and tears, and he couldn’t bring himself to finish the horrific thought. Losing her today wasn’t an option. He fortified his crumbling resolve with steel beams for what he knew was coming next, and he hoped he had the strength to make it through without losing his mind entirely.

           “We don’t have much time before ALIE wakes her up,” Clarke said, removing the hair tie from her mother’s ponytail and pushing her hair off to the side. “Jasper, Raven, I need you to shock her. Now.”

           She motioned for Marcus to back away, and he gave Abby’s hand a tight squeeze even though the rational part of his mind knew she couldn’t feel it.   _“We’re going to be okay”_ bounced around the disintegrating walls of his psyche, taking him back to the rubble in TonDC, and he tried to get his rapid breathing under control.

           Jasper sprinted into view, clutching a wrist band, and he secured it around her tiny wrist in less than a second. Monty connected a cord to the silver bracelet and dashed back to the homemade generator Raven had spent the day building. Without warning she flipped the switch, and the lights of Medical flickered like a candle in the wind.

           Marcus didn’t notice the lights or the generator. From a yard away his gaze was fixed on Abigail Griffin, and he was struck dumb with the knowledge that if anything went wrong today he might never get the chance to truly tell her how he felt. If anything went wrong today, he only had himself to blame.

           It was because of his intense fixation that he was taken aback when her entire body convulsed, her back forming a pronounced arch against the cot as the current traveled through her. He let out a cry of surprise, and Clarke turned to him with something akin to pity in her eyes.

           “You don’t have to watch, Kane,” she said, her voice soft. Something in the way she looked at him made it obvious that she knew. Even though she hadn’t been here for any extended period of time in more than three months and she hadn’t seen any of their recent interactions outside the gates of Polis, she somehow had put two and two together and she understood. “We can handle this.”

           “I’m not leaving,” he said, words tumbling out of his mouth with the force of an avalanche as he shook his head.

           “Okay,” Clarke responded, her tone fortified with the iron resolve Marcus knew could have only come from her mother. Raven flipped the generator switch again, and he winced as the woman he loved convulsed for a second time against the frayed mattress.

         “You might want to look away,” Raven advised, brushing past him to press a scalpel into Clarke’s open hands. “It’s about to get ugly.”

_It wasn’t ugly before?_  he thought with horror, his heart slamming a terrified drumbeat against his ribcage.

         “You’re sure you want to stay?” Raven asked, walking back to him and laying a hand on his upper arm. The empathy in her cinnamon eyes nearly filled his with tears.  _How do they all know?_  Could their feelings have been so obvious to everyone but themselves?

         “I’m not leaving,” he insisted. “I’m not leaving her.”

         And that was when he saw Clarke take a scalpel to the back of her mother’s neck.

         “What are you doing?” he shouted, any pretense of practicality abandoning him as he saw thick, crimson blood begin to seep from the incision site. His pulse was traveling a mile a minute and there was a roaring in his ears that he couldn’t cut off. He stepped forward involuntarily, moving before his brain knew he was in motion, and he was about to move forward again when he felt a pair of hands restrain him from behind and enclose his arm in a viselike grip.

         “She knows what she’s doing,” the disembodied voice of Bellamy Blake reassured him. “We’ve done this before. In Polis.”

       _But what if something’s different with her? What if the chip affected her differently than it did with Raven? What if this doesn’t work?_

        Marcus sagged against the boy’s strong restraint, and Bellamy let him go.

        “It’s gonna be okay, Kane,” he said. “She’s gonna be fine.”

         Despite their complicated history, Marcus felt a rush of affection for the eldest of the Blake siblings. He’d made a mistake, and he’d paid the price: Octavia would hardly speak to him now. But Marcus knew a thing or two about mistakes, and he wasn’t going to hold Bellamy’s transgressions against him when his own misgivings had cost 300 people their lives. He was doing the right thing now, and that was all that mattered.

        “Do you need me to help?” he asked as Bellamy walked over to Raven and Jasper. “I’ll get anything you need.”

        “I need someone to hand me a scissors,” Clarke said, and Marcus tried not to notice the redness smeared along the tips of her white medical gloves. He replayed Bellamy’s words in his head like a mantra, trying to force himself into believing it.

       _She’s going to be fine. She’s going to be fine._

        And Marcus truly did believe that if anyone could heal Abby Griffin besides Abby Griffin herself, her daughter could do it. But that didn’t alleviate the nausea that melted his balance, or the worry that swallowed his sanity whole. Nonetheless, he handed Clarke a pair of scissors.

        “Thanks,” she said, her gaze never leaving her mother’s still form. The kids eyed him warily as Clarke stuck her fingers into the incision site, extracting what looked like one of Jaha’s chips.

         Even though he hadn’t eaten anything all day, Marcus Kane felt like throwing up. Surgery, needles, scalpels…he had barely been able to tolerate getting shots as a child, and this scene was straight out of his childhood nightmares. Coupled with the fact that it was Abby on the table, he knew he’d be seeing this when he closed his eyes for the next few months.

         Clarke pulled the chip from her mother’s neck slowly, transferring it from her left hand to her right, but she ended up not needing the scissors: the wires adjoining it to Abby’s neck receded and folded back into the chip itself. Rage-stricken, Marcus wanted to yank the goddamn chip from Clarke’s hands and crush it under his boot for causing Abby so much suffering, so much pain.

         Raven flipped the generator switch one final time, which Bellamy explained was to ensure there was no trace of ALIE left behind in Abby’s system (Marcus was starting to think the kids had taken to informing him of what was happening so that he wouldn’t panic, which was probably a smart idea). Then they removed the band from her wrist, Raven and Jasper and Monty hauled the generator to a safe place, Bellamy went with them to ensure they were protected, and Clarke began to bandage her mother’s neck with a roll of gauze.

        “What’s next?” Marcus asked, weary and heartsick. She was still bleeding and he still felt like crying.

        “Now, we wait,” Clarke answered. “We’ll know if it worked in about six hours, as long as she follows the same pattern Raven did.”

        Marcus let out an anxious exhale, knowing that the next six hours would last six years. He saw Clarke’s shoulders sag a fraction and was reminded that he wasn’t the only one with a personal connection to the woman on the cot.

       “You did well,” he told her, resting a comforting hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Abby would be proud.”

        Clarke nodded, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands as she moved toward the trash bin to dispose of her gloves. It was at times like this that he could scarcely believe she was only a teenager: she carried herself with the poise of a woman much older, a woman born to lead her people.

        She reminded him so much of a younger Abby, and he felt his heart ache for them both.

        “She’ll be okay,” Marcus told her, echoing Bellamy’s earlier sentiment.

        Just then, Bellamy burst into the room.

        “Clarke, we need you,” he said, panting. “It’s Miller’s dad.”

        The girl nodded, straightening her posture and raising her chin from her chest. Even though she wasn’t facing him, Marcus could imagine the fire beginning to burn in her eyes again after the surgery had doused it. Determined once more, she grabbed a clean scalpel and a new pair of scissors.

       “I’m on my way,” she said. But before she left, she turned back to Marcus. “Kane, please watch her. Let me know if anything changes.”

        He knew then that she wasn’t speaking as Clarke Griffin, doctor, but as Clarke Griffin,  _daughter_ , and the sincerity and fear in her eyes nearly broke him.

        “I will,” he responded, giving her a reassuring nod.  _I wasn’t planning on leaving,_  he thought to himself.

        Marcus couldn’t have known, but Clarke knew he wasn’t. It was why she’d asked him.

                                                            ***

           A few hours later, all was calm in Medical. Bellamy had stopped by again to inform him of what was going on, saying Miller Senior had undergone the surgery as well. Marcus nodded and Bellamy nodded stiffly in return, making his way toward the exit.

           “Bellamy?” Marcus called after him. The boy turned on his heel and spun around, seemingly shocked that Marcus had anything else to say to him.

           “You’re doing the right thing,” he said, letting a small smile crawl over his otherwise tense features. Bellamy nodded, less rigidly this time, and a wan smile ghosted over his lips before he walked away.

           Then it was just he and Abby, and he felt worry bubble up inside of him once more. He checked the clock on the wall opposite them. 4:15 in the morning. It had been four hours since her operation, but it felt like eons ago that he’d seen Clarke make that cut in the back of her neck. He was still shaking, raw adrenaline soaring through his veins, and he knew his trembling wouldn’t cease until he knew she was all right.

           Clarke had come back a few hours ago, and Marcus had helped her turn Abby onto her back instead of her stomach once she determined the bleeding had stopped. “She’ll be more comfortable that way,” her daughter had insisted before going back to check on her other patient. Marcus had rummaged around Medical until he found a blanket, and he’d covered her in hopes that the warm fleece would give her even greater comfort.

           And that was the way things stood at 4:15 in the morning.

           Marcus looked at her in the darkness, appreciated the smoothness of her features when stress decided to release its grip on her. She was peaceful, serene, and it was difficult for him to believe her mind was anything but her own if she was so relaxed.

           At least, that was what he wanted to believe.

           He began talking, unsure of how else to pass the time as he reached forward and enclosed her small hand in one of his own.

           “Abby,” he whispered, deciding he didn’t care if she could hear him or not. “God, Abby. I’m so sorry this happened to you. You didn’t deserve any of this. I’m going to kill Jaha for what he did, although you’ll probably try to talk me out of it.” He cut off his sentence with a brief laugh, knowing that the Abby Griffin he knew would rather put Jaha on trial for his crimes than execute him. But with all of Arkadia under the man’s chip-induced spell, he acknowledged that day was probably still a far way off.

           “I hope you’re not in pain,” he continued, stroking his thumb over the ridges of her knuckles. “That’s another thing you never deserved – all this pain. If I could have taken it from you, if I could have put that chip in my head, I would have. I wish it could have been me, Abby. I wish it could have been me instead of you.”

           And then, whether from the stress of the day, the awful images he couldn’t block out of his head, or the lack of sleep, everything came tumbling out at once.

           “This is my fault. If I had made you come with me instead of letting you stay here, you wouldn’t have had to go through this. The pain you felt, the memories you lost…that’s my fault. All of it. And if you’ve forgotten me, if you forgot everything that happened between us, that’s probably no less than what I deserve.”

           His vision was clouded with tears.

           “If you wake up and don’t remember a thing about me, I probably deserve that, too. Because I don’t deserve  _you_ , Abby. I don’t deserve your kindness, or your forgiveness, or your love. It’s a mystery how someone like you could fall in love with someone like me, and if it ends up being too good to be true and you don’t remember me I wouldn’t be surprised. Jake was a good man, a better man than I’ll ever be, and I hope you get every single last memory of him back that Jaha stole from you.”

          He was crying openly now, the room swimming as her chest continued to rise and fall before him.

          “And even if everything we were is in the past now, I have to say this while it might still matter. I love you, Abby, and I should have said it sooner. I should have said it when you kissed me on the cheek, I should have said it when you came to see me before the execution, I should have said it when you helped Miller and Octavia and Harper free us, and I should have said it before I left you here. I should have told you, but I didn’t, and I’m sorry. I love you, and I’m sorry.”

           A small figure drifted into the corner of his vision, and he turned to the doorway to face whoever was entering the room. Although he couldn’t see her features, the distinctive silhouette made her presence obvious.

           “Clarke?” he said, wondering how much of his speech she had heard. His eyebrows knitted together in worry – nothing between he and Abby was “official” when everything had descended into hell, Clarke had still been in Polis when it happened – and if she didn’t approve, he’d back away. No matter how much it killed him inside, he’d let Abby go.

           He’d love her forever, but he’d let her go.

           “She loves you, too,” Clarke croaked as she approached him. Although the dark masked her tears, the thickness in her voice made her emotions as apparent as if she’d stepped into the sunlight. “I could tell when I saw you together, when you were in Polis for the Summit. She looks at you the same way she looked at my dad.”

           Marcus couldn’t quite dispel the rush of warmth that radiated through him upon hearing those words.  _She looks at you the same way she looked at my dad._  He opened his mouth to say something in response, even if he didn’t have the words at his disposal yet, but Clarke cut him off.

           “You’re good for her,” she said. “It’s been a long time since she’s been happy, and you make her happy, Kane. She deserves that. You both do. And if you love each other, you should be together. I want that for her.”

           A mysterious shadow fell across her voice on the word “love.“ Not for the first time, he wondered what had happened in Polis, wondered how deeply the Commander’s death had affected her.

           “Thank you, Clarke,” he whispered, overwhelmed with gratitude at being given her blessing. She was close enough now that he could see the small smile that brought crinkles to the edges of her eyes, and for a moment she looked like the eighteen-year-old she truly was.

           “I hope she remembers,” she said as the smile slipped from her face and she went back to being Clarke Griffin, surgeon and Flaimekepa. “I really hope she remembers everything.”

           “She will,” Marcus said. “She will.”

                                                             ***

           6:15 came and went, and Abby Griffin didn’t wake up.

           Marcus sat with her all night and into the day, holding her hand and stroking her forehead. He looked at the clock, then back at her, then back at the clock again. She didn’t have a fever. Her breathing was even and steady, her pulse was strong.

            _Why isn’t she waking up?_

           Every breath she took without opening her eyes was a knife to his heart. He’d considered the possibility of her awakening and not remembering him, but he hadn’t prepared himself for the chance that she might not wake up at all.

           “Please, Abby,” he whispered. “Open your eyes.”

           “Anything?” a voice asked, startling him, and when Marcus regained his composure he found himself in the presence of Raven Reyes.

           “Not yet,” he responded. The young mechanic’s dejection was subtle, but it bled through in the deep exhale that escaped from her lips and the crease in her unlined brow. She drummed her fingertips against her leg, lost in thought.

           “It might have been a little longer than six hours,” she said. “There’s no way in hell Clarke knew that for sure. I bet she was just guessing.”

           “She might have been,” Marcus said numbly. He’d never known Clarke Griffin to guess.

           6:30 passed, then 7:00. Nothing. Marcus kept holding her hand, fighting back his increasing terror.  _She’ll be fine,_  he told himself as his hope began to waver and bend under the weight of their circumstances.  _She’ll be fine._

           The new day had brought new patients to Medical whose brains had been hijacked by the malevolent AI, and Clarke hadn’t had a chance to stop by and check on her mother yet. For her sake and the sake of her patients, Marcus almost hoped none of the other kids had told her yet.

           7:30. 

           Nothing.

           The second hand marched cruelly onward, marking every moment and every breath he took without her. It was all he could do not to reach over and wrench the heartless machine from its post on the wall. After all, that was the closest he could come to stopping time forever, and he realized he would rather freeze the universe for good than continue to live in a world without Doctor Abigail Griffin.

         The rest of the kids stopped by periodically throughout the hours, inquiring about her condition, and Marcus told them what little he could. She was fine. She didn’t have a fever. She was fine. Her pulse was normal. She was fine. Her breathing was steady. She was fine.

         _But what if she’s not?_

       8:00.

       Nothing.

       8:30.

       Nothing.

       9:00.

       Nothing.

       “Come on, Abby,” he whispered, moving her hand to rest against his forehead as his eyes filled with tears.

       “Please,” he begged, pleading with a woman who couldn’t hear his desperate gasps. “Come back to me, Abby. Come back to me.”

       His mind, just as cruel as the clock, chose that moment to replay their final meeting. He could feel her lips on his, soft and warm, and his heartbeat sped up as he recalled how the same hands he now held had tangled in his hair.

_“May we meet again,”_  he’d said, stupidly oblivious to what torture was heading her way. To how little time he had left with her.  _“We will,”_  she’d responded, and her smile had lit up every single corner of his aching heart.

          Marcus Kane, sitting in Medical with only the clock to keep him company, would’ve sold his soul to the devil to see that smile again.

           9:30.

           Nothing.

           10:00.

           Nothing.

           His hands were shaking and his blood ran cold. It had been over four hours since she was supposed to have awoken, but her eyelids hadn’t so much as fluttered. There was no way Clarke could have been off by that large of an amount of time. It was time to face the facts, he thought with an icy sense of dread: something had gone wrong.

           There was no physical force that could tear him from Abby Griffin. There was no storm, no army, no disaster that could have ripped his hand from hers. He belonged to her, now and forever, and nothing on the Earth’s surface could separate his soul from its post by her bed.

           But she needed Clarke more than him now, and he had to let her go. So, his heart splintering further with every passing second that fled by the wall’s soulless timekeeper, he pressed his trembling lips to the back of her hand and said what he had wanted to say all along.

           “I love you, Abby. I’ll always love you.”

           He began to uncurl his hand from hers, pressing one last kiss to the knuckles of her left hand, when he felt that pressure around his fingers resume. At first he thought he was imagining things, feeling what he so desperately wanted to feel, but when he went to extract his grip again it became obvious.

           Abby was holding his hand.

           After a few seconds her eyes flew open, and Marcus couldn’t stop a joyful sob from prying its way through his lips. She just breathed for a few moments, air rushing through her lungs as she adjusted to her surroundings, and then she spoke.

           “Marcus?” she said in a hoarse whisper, and the hope in her eyes glued his broken heart back together.

           “I’m here,” he whispered, still in disbelief that she was real, awake, in front of him, and remembered who he was.  _I am the luckiest man on the planet._

          “Abby, I’m right here,” he repeated, smiling even after he felt his cheeks beginning to numb. She reached out and grabbed the collar of his shirt, and he stood up from his seat when he realized she was pulling him in for a kiss.

          Passion conquered exhaustion as their lips collided, even though the angle at which they met was awkward and their limbs ached. She pushed her torso off the bed and Marcus helped her into a seated position, peppering kisses along her forehead, cheeks, jawline, and back to her lips again. Abby laughed, running her fingers through his hair and reaching down to hold one of his hands in her own.

         Eventually they ended up holding each other, Abby resting her forehead on his shoulder and him pressing his lips to her neck. She raised her mouth to his ear, her voice riddled with fatigue.

        “I was afraid that I wouldn’t see you again.”

        He smiled against her skin, pulling her even closer. Clarke needed to know her mother was awake, and he’d tell her as soon as he could, but he was still afraid that if he let go of her he’d discover that this was all a dream.

       “I had those fears myself,” he said, and this time it was he who initiated the kiss. They managed to get the angle right the second time around, and for the next few minutes they lost themselves in the sensation of being close to each other, of lips on skin and hearts connected.

       That was, until a pointed cough rang out from just across the room. They broke apart with a gasp, both shifting to focus on their unexpected third guest.

       “I get that you guys are happy, but  _damn_. Get a room. I mean, I’m gonna have to bleach my eyes after that,” Raven said, grinning as her voice wavered.

       She ran straight into Abby’s arms.

       Clarke, Bellamy, Jasper, and Monty made their way into the room, and brown eyes met blue.

_Thank you,_  Clarke’s gaze seemed to say as she looked from her mom to Marcus and back at her mom again. It wasn’t long before Abby noticed her daughter’s arrival, and Raven backed away to allow Clarke some time with her alone.

        Of course, in typical Raven fashion, she also decided when Clarke had enough alone time with her mom.

        “Group hug!” she shouted, wrapping her arms around both Abby and Clarke and motioning for the boys to join in. They walked toward the center of the room, grinning from ear to ear, and wrapped their arms around the women. Marcus was the last to join, his arms overlapping with Bellamy’s, and he turned to smile at him again for the second time in less than a day.

        Together, Marcus knew, it didn’t matter what they faced. Mountain Men. A dictator. A grounder army. A psychotic AI.

        Together, they were unstoppable.


End file.
